"Sitting is a risk factor, not a disease," study author Dr. Peter Katzmarzyk, associate executive director for population science at Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University System in Baton Rouge, La, told WebMD. "It's comparable to obesity, and it's almost to the level of smoking. We need to turn that around and engineer sitting out of our lives."
For Katzmaryk's study, researchers pulled data from five relevant research papers that involved nearly 167,000 adults. The researchers then came up with "population attributable fraction (PAF)" estimates that measure theoretical effects of how sitting would affect an entire population. Those estimates were used to calculate the number of deaths associated with sitting down, leading researchers to conclude that restricting sitting to fewer than three hours a day could tack on two more years of living. They also found cutting television viewing to less than two hours each day could lead to a 1.38-year gain in longevity.
The findings are published in the July 9 issue of BMJ Open.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-57469377-10391704/sitting-less-than-3-hours-each-day-may-tack-2-more-years-onto-your-life/
